The distant ringing in Karon's ears had faded and left only a pressing silence in its wake. His heartbeat came slow and all too steady, marching on bravely despite the pain gnawing at the center of his chest.

With his jaw clenched hard, the trickster rose from the ground and absently, slowly, brushed the dirt off his knuckles, small trickles of it falling to the ground along with patches of skin. Blood seeped from the wounds in tiny droplets, but went unnoticed as Karon found his entire body aching with a pain beyond anything physical.

He remained still, ignoring the ever-present danger of the hunter stalking him, and whatever other dangers the once-sacred forest had in store for him. Eternities seemed to pass him by as somewhere in the back of his mind, beyond where consciousness could touch, his mind raced and processed, leaving only a dazed look on his face.

Eventually, the raging storm settled, and clarity returned to Karon's eyes as thoughts took shape again and a voice rose from the deep parts of his mind to speak.

“We need to get out of here. We need to get out, doesn't matter how, and find Trixie.”

“She needs us.”

“Don't fail her. Forget everything else. Only she matters now.”

“Only she matters now.”

The words echoed inside Karon's mind like a mantra, then he blinked rapidly and turned his head to look around. Not far from where he stood, an orange glow chased away some of the darkness, and as he approached it he found Promise laying on the ground, the runes on the spear burning furiously, and the panicked thoughts of the spirit within rang out like ethereal screams.

He bent down and picked the spear up, and as soon as his fingers closed around it he felt its mind press upon his with a flood of concerned relief.

“Master, what happened!?”

Even beneath the flood of emotion, Karon could sense the fractured state of the spirit. Like a weaver trying to hold firm a weave where the threads had a life of their own, all of them struggling to tear away in a different direction, threatening to unravel the whole thing.

“I'm alright, Promise. But I need you to find a way out of this forest now, without delay.”

“Master, are you sure, your aura is ver--”

“I said now, Promise.”

“I've tried, master, but the entire forest is connected and the soul eater is in total control. Even if I could connect to the network of the forest mind, I wouldn't be strong enough to change anything.”

“So my only alternatives are to run until we reach the edge of the physical space of the forest and use the natural gateways that would form there to escape, or blow a hole to another world or reality through a tree?”

“I think so, master, but I don't know any way to navigate through the forest now that the soul...soul...”

“Promise?”

Something was bubbling up from behind Promise's mind - where before it had been a near-void, the spirit now had layers, and for every heartbeat that passed, they deepened and grew to form a“Promise I command you to stop and take control of yourself again!”  complicated matrix. Now the thin thread of control Karon could feel Promise was holding onto was slipping out of its grasp, and other newborn parts of itself sought dominion.

“Is she pretty?” The whisper slithered into Karon's mind from within the spear, the voice different, acid, hurt, mocking.

“Promise, focus.”

“She must be so pretty, so lovely for you to care so much. Do you lie to her?”

“Promise I command you to stop and take control of yourself again!”

“Why does she follow you? No matter now, I can't sense her anymore, she's gone, gone, gone.”

“Promise, shut up and--”

“Forget about her! She's not important, I am! I am! I am! I protect master. I slay for master. I will drink from the bleeding minds of all that would hurt master!”

“Promise, control yourself or I will leave you here!”

Fear lashed out inside the spirit and drowned everything else out, and the voice of the spirit returned to normal.

“I'm sorry master, I'm so sorry... I'm... I'm--”

“It doesn't matter right now. Find me a way out so we can leave. We will deal with this when we have time for it.”

“Yes, master,” came the reply, and had it not been impossible, Karon would have sworn the spirit was crying from the quivering tone in her voice. “I think... maybe if I sense out the vibrations of each tree we pass I can sense what the nature of the energy and worlds they connect to are. If we find one we know or is close to one we are familiar with, we could try and pass through to it.”

“Might work. What if we use the trees to form a connected trail behind us, so that we can determine if we're going forward by the straight line we leave behind us?”

“The soul eater will be able to sense it. It will find us quickly master.”

“It's a powerful soul eater with an admitted penchant for hunting, and one who has lived in this forest for who knows how long. I'm sure he will be able to find us quickly whenever he wishes to.”

“Why hasn't he already then master?”

“Dolor said she'd 'trained' him. Her sadism probably rubbed off on him after a while of that.”

“If he comes anywhere near you master, I will crack his skull open and drink of his screams!”

Karon didn't say anything to that. For all the spirit's boasting and intense commitment, it was empty talk. No matter the outrage it might feel, it was limited to what connected to it and could influence nothing outside of that. And even should the soul eater connect to it, either physically or mentally, he would simply overpower it with brute force, and devour the spirit.

“Focus on doing your job. I don't want to fight Timor; he's not important, getting out and fin--... Just focus on getting us out first.”

“Yes master.”

Without hesitating, Karon started to run toward the same direction they had headed in before they'd stopped. He held Promise high above him, and the constant exchange of light and dark as he dashed forward gave the sense of a mad scramble into nothingness. However Karon was not relying on his sight to guide him forward, and his senses were desperately reaching out to touch everything around him, heedless of whether those places were in light or shadow. It didn't seem to matter though as none of what came back was useful.

The trees writhed in the iron grip the soul eater had them all in, silent screams born of inexpressible pain. From within the spear, a web was cast behind Karon, thin threads of energy hooking into each tree they passed and forming a whole bound together to keep him on his path. And every tree that the spirit did connect to, there was a flicker of taste, a search for anything familiar inside of what it contained.

Time passed by unmeasured, and the web behind them grew from hundreds to become thousands of connected trees. And Karon could feel no end coming up ahead of him, only a small circle of light around him, and an endless dark, home to a forest of trees begging to die.

But Karon's eyes did not flicker with uncertainty or despair, they remained clear and focused. In the back of his mind the words still echoed, and he whispered them whenever his legs threatened to stumble or falter.

“Only she matters now.”

His senses kept searching, feeling out the trees as Promise hooked into them. Hundreds of trees, thousands, even more. And he would search until he found one that could take him away, it didn't matter how many there were.

“Only she matters now.”

He kept on sensing, his mind easing into the simple rhythm of running, each few steps taking him past another set of trees his mind dived into. It didn't not take him long before he was almost in a trance, and there was nothing else but the trees and his burning legs.

And so he did not notice the simple trap until he was just upon it.

It was nothing but a simple glyph, drawn in the dust on the ground. It was hardly charged at all, and so it didn't give off enough energy for Karon to detect it until he was a mere three steps away from it. It exploded in a bright flash of white light and a loud bang, and Karon automatically threw up his hands and crouched down. Then instincts painfully carved into him from many an adventure gone wrong kicked in, and he turned the crouch into a roll and vanished out of sight.

Invisible to any physical senses, he came up standing with Promise held out before him, the spear cloaked in the same field as himself, and so the light of the runes no longer reached any further than a few inches out from them.

Total darkness surrounded them together with absolute silence.

“That wasn't meant to do damage to us.”

“No, it was meant to scare us.”

“Or make us stop.”

Barely had the thought crossed his mind before the sound of footsteps reached his ears, and from the darkness came a slow chuckle.

“Good reflexes. I've met many creatures that only stood in fear and confusion from those traps.”

The voice came from Karon's left, and what was disturbing was how Karon couldn't feel the presence of the soul eater. All he sensed was the forest, and that alone was reason enough to be worried.

Karon didn't respond - as long as he was cloaking himself no sound would escape the field around him, anyway. Instead he moved forward slowly towards where the voice had come from, Promise held out in front of him, ready to strike forward and sink into the soul eater at any time.

“Yet you not only collected yourself, you made an evasive move and shielded yourself from sight. And not only sight, there is no smell or sound either, I would have noticed.”

This time the voice came from behind Karon, and he spun around with his heart hammering in his chest. The voice was close.

“Yet you forget one thing, trickster. I am not a hunter of flesh or blood. I am a true hunter; I hunt souls...”

From the darkness, something came lightning fast and struck Karon in the face, sending him crashing to the ground. His hand clenched around Promise and held the spear tight to keep it from flying out of his grasp, and the voice spoke again, close enough for the soul eater to reach out and touch the trickster should he wish to.

“And you cannot hide your soul from me.”

Karon swung Promise up towards the source of the voice, but met no resistance as it cut through empty air. He quickly scrambled up on his legs and dropped the field cloaking him, and Promise's light sprang out to chase away the dark around them.

Timor came into view standing just a few steps in front of Karon. In his hands the soul eater held a spear of his own; a brown staff with a silvery blade at the top, with a necklace of feathers and small bones around the base. He stood in a relaxed stance, but from behind the mask, a complete focus burned into Karon as he started to circle around the trickster.

“You caught me by surprise when you destroyed one of our trees. I take it your companion fell prey to the magic unleashed when that happened? No matter, I still have you here as my prey, you... and that little spirit hiding inside your spear.”

“Are you gonna do the villain monologue for much longer? Because I have stuff to do and I find what you're saying a bit trite and overdone,” Karon replied in an irritated tone of voice, and swallowed the nervous knot in his throat angrily.

“What point is there if you can take no pleasure in the hunt?” the soul eater asked.

“No idea, let me know when you find out, or preferably don't. Just get out of my way.”

“Dolor likes to play games. She thinks it is pain that reveals what truly hides within the soul of a being. I disagree - I think it is fear. The real fear that can only be felt when all around you is the dark and death, and the breath of a predator is against your neck.”

“As much as I love discussing philosophy with a psychopath in the middle of a dark forest, I don't have time for this,” Karon stated and took a step forward and purposefully refrained from turning his head to look at Timor, who had circled around and was standing behind him.

“You exist now only to amuse me, trickster; as soon as that ends, so will your life,” Timor responded calmly.

Karon took a deep breath and let it out slowly, then turned to face the soul eater. “So what, now we fight?”

“You wouldn't last long,” Timor replied without a hint of worry in his voice.

“Yeah, I got a feeling you might be right,” Karon said and twirled Promise in an arc before him, and the spear came to rest with the tip pointing straight towards the soul eater's heart.

“Yet you're still willing to fight?”

“The odds don't matter right now,” Karon told him calmly, “only she does.”

The trickster closed his eyes, and from the spear on his hands erupted a light so bright it shone through his eyelids and made him wince. When he opened them he saw Timor momentarily stunned, backing away while rubbing pointlessly at his eyes, the golden mask making him unable to reach them.

Karon took in the scene in front of him - the immensely powerful soul eater in a vulnerable state, the spirit of Promise crying out in desire to kill him, the dark forest feeding the eater with the life and power of uncountable worlds. Then he turned and ran as fast as he could.

The spear in Karon's hand possibly hummed with disappointment, but it kept to its instructions, and lashed out and connected to every tree they passed as the trickster practically blew by them faster than it could keep up. Karon's heart drummed furiously against his chest, his legs striking against the ground desperately as his only thought was to get as far away from the soul eater as possible.

If Timor could sense something as subtle and hard to detect as the energy a soul gave off, then most if not all of Karon's tricks would do nothing against him. He could not hide his presence, nor could he make use of illusions - they merely duplicated his appearance and nothing else. Timor wouldn't even need to use his eyes or any other of his physical senses. With his connection to the forest, he could simply sense out everything in his surrounding, including Karon and his soul.

With a twist in his gut, Karon realized that was how he had avoided being detected by the trickster. Skilled as Karon was in the subtle arts of magic, the soul eater could simply have used his connection to the forest to cloud his presence, to make it seem like he was just a part of it. Metaphysical camouflage. Karon had no idea how to counter that.

There was no better option than to run, and so he ran. The trees passed by him in a flurry, and everything turned into a muddled haze as his breath grew ragged, and he had to focus to keep from stumbling or smashing into one of the trees constantly appearing out of the dark only a few meters ahead.

Then something caught his leg, and Karon was yanked backwards and slammed face-first into the ground. Dazed, he had sense only to twist to his right, and narrowly avoided the spear thrust into the ground where his chest had been only a moment ago. But he could not avoid the kick that followed, and it hit right in the stomach and sent what little air his short breaths had managed to catch right out again.

Karon wheezed, then froze as he felt the tip of the soul eater's spear come to rest beneath his chin. “Fine trick, little rabbit, but the chase is over now.”

“I'm not a fucking rabbit you unimaginative freak,” Karon wheezed out in a voice less than a whisper.

“No, but you've given no more sport than a mere animal would. I didn't really expect you to, though, but I'll be sure to bring something of you back, maybe Dolor will like it as a keepsake.”

Karon didn't reply, instead his mind was racing trying to think of a way to escape - and one idea rose as the most stupid and dangerous considering he was literally laying with a blade at his throat, held by an eater of souls.

He looked up at the golden-masked soul eater with tearful eyes, then closed them and relaxed completely. His body sprawled prone on the ground like he had fallen asleep, and with a soundless roar heard only in his mind, Karon's spirit flew out of his body and smashed into Timor with an explosion of energy that sent him flying back.

Timor did a back flip midair and landed easily on his legs, his movement liquid and graceful, but Karon was no longer constrained by physical laws, and so he smashed into the soul eater once again as soon as he had recovered. This time Timor managed to re-direct most of the energy, but enough hit him to make him stumble backwards uncertainly, and Karon started to assault his mind with mental energy while he was still unbalanced.

He turned every drop of anger and fear he felt into a weapon and channeled it, an unrelenting barrage of impressions forcing themselves upon the soul eater's mind. He was a hunter, a tracker, so Karon gave him more than he could handle. A thousand different smells, a thousand sounds distant and near, tens of thousand of senses - soft moss beneath one's hands; the look of a trail of wounded deers; the taste of blood in ones mouth. Everything to provide an overload of information.

However, Timor was no young novice. As Karon was assaulting his mind, he got a sense of the soul eater's age, and the wealth of experience he had gathered over the years stretched inside his mind like a never-ending ocean.

Karon's barrage struck against this ocean and made it thrash in agitation. But beneath the waves a pressure rose and slowly calmed them, met against the multitude of false sensations provided by Karon's assault, and they all brushed off against it as if they were nothing.

It was pure focus, the focus of a hunter that had pursued prey of all kinds for centuries. The kind of focus that shaped the faintest of signs and turned them into clear knowledge, the kind that shaped sense out of the apparent chaos of it all.

The soul eater's mind hardened into an impenetrable barrier, and Karon's spirit flickered back uncertainly as the hunter that stood before him turned his golden mask, and that ocean of pure focus was directed at him. Karon felt something stretch out towards him, something so cold it burned with nothingness, and with a shiver of fear the spirit realized that Timor had tired completely of the game, and meant to eat him.

The fear was something primal, the fear of having what you are turned into food and devoured, and it was so powerful Karon had already fled back into his body before he realized what was happening. He latched on to the bag of meat with a painful wrench in his spirit, and abruptly his mind became flooded with new sensations. Being bound to a squelching mass of flesh and bone, how heavy and tired it felt, the ache of his burning legs and weary limbs, the hunger in his stomach.

It passed through his mind in flashes, and he quickly forced the body that felt so strange to stand up, and it awkwardly did. Timor was stalking towards him slowly, hunched down and with his legs bent deeply and tensed, ready to spring forward. A hiss escaped through his mask, and his fingers clenched and unclenched around the spear he held eagerly.

Neither of them said anything, they just circled one another, the liquid yet tense movements of the soul eater, and the tired yet determined ones of Karon. Both of them measuring the other, both of them waiting for the other to make a move.

Karon broke first, and rushed forward and thrust with his spear towards Timor's face, which the soul eater easily avoided by twisting his neck, and swept with his own spear towards Karon's feet. The trickster kicked out with his right leg towards the incoming spear and struck against it, sending it flying back. Timor took three quick steps to his left to keep his balance as his body followed the motion, and Karon kept on thrusting with Promise, pressing Timor further away as he sought to avoid getting skewered on the midnight black blade.

Unexpectedly, lightning erupted from the spear and struck the soul eater, and kept on burning him as it ran from Karon's palms along the shaft, before jumping into Timor as he fell to the ground in painful spasms. A sound like the angry buzzing of bees filled the air, then everything went silent as the lightning faded, and Karon walked carefully towards the red-clad shape of the soul eater, his body twitching sporadically. The soul eater's spear on the ground and out of his reach.

He halted when a furious hiss sounded from the shape, and Timor rose from the ground with wisps of smoke rising from his body. The hiss increased in strength until it burned in Karon's ears, and when it reached a crescendo the soul eater simply slammed the palms of his hands together, and a thunderclap struck Karon with enough force to send him flying into a tree five meters behind him.

Small spots of bright light flickered across Karon's vision, and a squelching sound in his stomach was the only warning he got before he turned himself over and felt the contents of his stomach escape through his mouth. The acid stench of the vomit pricked in his nostrils, and the sharp pain in the side of his chest that occurred with every single movement informed him that he had probably broken something.

He felt claw-like fingers dig into his skin and grasp him around his throat, as he was effortlessly lifted up into the air and held out before the soul eater, and then he spoke, rage infused into every syllable he spat.

“I am tempted to bring you back to Dolor so she could show you just how far into pain one can truly lose themselves, and the only reason I'm not going to is because it would mean I would be denied the pleasure of sending you there myself. So my own meager skills in causing pain will just have to suffice!”

From the tip of his fingers actual needle-like claws sprang out and dug into Karon's skin, and the trickster screamed in pain as he felt a sticky, warm liquid enter his body.

“That thing you're feeling, that hot tingling, is a poison Dolor had me develop as part of my training. It won't kill you for a long time, but it will set your nervous system on fire, and soon enough you will be blubbering for me to cut your throat,” the soul eater hissed and dropped Karon to the ground.

Karon's body was shaking - at first, it wasn't such a bad thing, a slight tingling that ran like sharp currents beneath his skin. He turned his head to the right and saw Promise on the ground, the light of the runes like a beacon, ushering him to reach out and grasp it, unleash the spear's fury and let it rip through the golden mask of the soul eater and bury itself in his skull.

Timor did not miss his longing stare, and slammed a fist hard into Karon's head, and while the dazed trickster moaned in pain he reached down and took the spear into his own hands. For a moment, the runes on the spear flared up into an almost blinding light, and the soul eater tensed noticeably, like he was fighting something off. Until he relaxed, and chuckled.

“This was a surprise. Here I thought it was merely a familiar bound into your spear, and instead I find a soul growing inside, barely born yet. Fresh, ripe... and so confused.”

The soul eater turned Promise around and struck the butt of the spear down hard into Karon's abdomen. The trickster shouted, half-breathing an insult before gulping for air and turning his eyes up towards the soul eater.

“Let it... go.”

“No,” Timor replied offhandedly and twirled the spear around, then stopped and tilted his head curiously like an idea had just occurred to him. “No, I think I have something better in mind.”

He threw the spear down on top of Karon, and the trickster feebly reached his hands around the shaft. Immediately the spirit of the spear responded, but it was like a hundred voices all screamed at the same time, drowning out any sense or meaning. The poison was taking its effect, and what was once a mere tingling sensation felt now like uncountable tiny daggers digging into Karon's veins, burning him from the inside out. He tried to lift the spear, turn it against Timor and kill the despicable creature. But his muscles refused to obey, and responded only with shaky twitches.

“The poison will take a long time, and it will only grow worse. So, I will be merciful since you did provide me with more sport than I expected, and it does get boring out here often. If you can convince your spirit servant to take your life, I will spare it.”

Karon stared up at the soul eater with bulging eyes, than started to laugh hoarsely. “Serio..sly? That's... so cliché...I'm insulted.”

Timor brought his face close, a slight sweet smell drifting out from underneath the golden mask as Karon stared into the metallic depth of it, and the dark slits where his eyes hid within. “I am a hunter, in a forest where all prey is already felled and I will never go hungry. I will never starve, and   there is no thrill to the hunt beyond the fear of the little prey that stumbles in from the outside. I don't need cold pragmatism like Maeror, or the sick games of Dolor as she tortures her toys. I only need the smell of fear, and that single last shuddering breath before I tear into your soul.”

Timor drew a long hiss, his mask so close it almost brushed against Karon's nose, and for a moment, Karon thought he could see a pair of dead white eyes stare back out into his from within the mask.

“And I can smell it on you. I can smell it in your sweat and blood, in your beating heart and your spirit. You fear dying, you fear the emptiness that will be all that's left after I eat everything you are. You've stared into the void before, haven't you? You fear failure, I can hear the whimper in your soul; you want to save your companion, I see the visions you imagine of her, the terrible places she might have ended up in after killing that tree. And you are right, chances are she is right now laying somewhere in pain, fearing like you, wishing you could save her. And you are right to fear - she will never be saved by you, there won't be a you. I will eat you, and everything you are, I will take - and should she ever manage to make her way back here, I will devour her, too.”

Karon tensed his entire body and pushed with all his might to will it into action. He wanted to wrap his hands around Timor's throat and crush him until his own hands broke, he wanted to rip off the mask and claw out his eyes while screaming he would never touch her.

But he couldn't – instead, his body merely tensed and twisted with every attempt at movement, and the poison burned all the more acutely.

“Drink in your fear, trickster. It is made all the sweeter now that you must make a choice. I will eat you, and I will eat your companion if she ever comes back here. But I will leave the spirit alone - I might even keep it and let Dolor teach it to become one of us. It is an easy thing to learn, especially for a spirit about to grow a soul. Let it take your life, and it will get to experience its own, while I take your soul.”

Inside the spear the voices screamed all the louder, some in denial, some in rage, and some in agreement.

“Promise.” Karon stretched his mind into the whirlwind of voices and sent the thought.

“Master! Don't listen to him, use me! I will kill him, take my power so I can KILL HIM!”

“Promise...”

“I KNOW that is my NAME! I am Master's TOY and now I'm BROKEN! Play with me, master!”

“Promise, I need you to listen!”

“I am listening, but it's so hard to HEAR when all you do is TALK, TALK, TALK  and don't KILL!”

“Promise… I can't fight him.”

“Of COURSE you CAN. If you can't fight then I am USELESS! I am PROMISE and I am a WEAPON. The voices lie, I can't feel things, I don't even have a HEART! I have no lungs to breathe with but my breath still catch when I HEAR YOUR VOICE and I OBEY!”

“Promise, I can't fight hi-”

“Don't ask it of me, master. Don't command me to kill you, I can't... I will obey... I will.. MAKE IT STOP!! Take me away and make it stop, command me master, kill him, and command me. I don't want to want anything, I want it to stop. Only master, NOTHING ELSE! NO WILL, NO DESIRES, NO PURPOSE BUT MASTER!!”

“I'm sorry I didn't pay more attention to you, Promise, I'm sorry I didn't prepare you better for this. I can't make it stop, you will become your own being soon, and you will have to make your own choices, through a will of your own.”

“NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!”

“I have one last command for you though, Promise, one thing I want you to do. And I need you to do it, even if you don't have to obey, I need you to see it through.”

“I can't obey master. I can't kill master. I can't obey master. I can't kill master. I can't, I can't, I can't…”

“I need you to find Trixie, and save her - whatever it takes, Promise. Find her.”

Before the spirit could respond, Karon cut the connection and sent his mind into the heart of the tree his back was against. He found the heart of the tree, the core through which all the thousands of lines of energy flowed and connected to, and he struck at it with every sliver of power he possessed, then everything went bright and silent.

Slowly a ringing in Karon's ears grew, and his eyelids fluttered awkwardly, like they were trying to close but didn't have the strength for it. A fountain of energy was spraying in the place a tree had stood only moments before, and Karon was laying a few meters away from it with his face turned towards it all, allowing him to observe the flashes of energy that sprang out and tried to latch on to anything it could reach.

Karon was too far away for any of it to connect to him, but Promise was closer, the runes still glowing orange with power. Then one of the lines of energy lashed out hungrily, seeking anything to grasp, and it found Promise.

The energy enveloped the spear in a cloud of green and gold, and relief washed over Karon as he felt the spear connect to the energy and join with it. It rose from the ground and floated through the air, guided by the energy unleashed until it hung in the center of the fountain of energy.

It would be transported to a world, connected to it through whatever life, prophecy or event the energy had come from. Promise would be confused, vulnerable, and most likely have to go through pure hell in order to rise and become strong, alive, and find a personal will, but he knew it would. Promise would not give up, and no matter how long it took, it would seek to find Trixie, and get her home. Even if Karon wouldn't be waiting there, it would have to do. He had nothing else left to give.

Then abruptly, the fountain of energy started moving like a candle flame in a wind, thrashing from side to side. And then Karon saw the ragged old man from the manor, Maeror, come walking into view, one hand stretched out lazily towards the energy. And he drank it all in.

Energy enough to level a city, to heal an army of sick, and the soul eater consumed it all while wearing the same uncaring, neutral look on his face as before.

Tears rolled out of Karon's eyes as he was forced to watch what happened before him - he didn't even have the strength to turn away. It lasted less than a minute, until all the energy was consumed, and Promise fell to the ground, still trapped in the forest.

Everything was dark, the runes on Promise shone like dying embers and provided no light for Karon to see. It was better that way, he thought, and surrendered to the darkness. There was no point in fighting now, and whatever he felt was distant and muted, lost in the same way as his last hope to help Trixie.

“What happened?” an old and gritty voice asked from the dark.

“The female companion destroyed a tree and escaped through one of the root gateways. The trickster tried to do the same when he understood I won the hunt.”

“I am not concerned with your petty pleasures, Timor; I allowed my daughter to keep and train you for her sake. You are allowed to continue because you do not disrupt the work I have built here – if that is changing, then…” Maeror spoke again, his voice monotone and uncaring.

“I… It will never happen again, I swear to you, father. Let me eat the fool that would dare destroy your work and forget this ever happened,” Timor quickly replied in a nervous voice.

“No, father, please! Let me keep him, let me play with him. I promise I will make him behave, I will teach him. I will teach him much better than I taught Timor, I promise,” Dolor's voice cut through the dark, her voice pleading and sweet.

“Another one? Is it really necessary, my dear?” Maeror asked.

“All the other ones broke, Timor is the only one who made it through and he's so boring. Only wants to run around in the forest like some animal. I need someone to play games with, someone more than just a brutish beast. A trickster would be perfect! Father... pleeeease!”

Maeror paused for a moment, before giving a conciliatory sigh. “As you wish; you are responsible for him now, daughter. Don't disappoint me. Should my work be disrupted again on his account, I will eat you too and find a new daughter.”

“Thank you, father!” Dolor squealed, and in the dark Karon heard the sound of dancing footsteps come close. Something brushed against his cheek, and then he heard Dolor's voice whisper sweetly in his ear. “You and I are going to have so much fun! There is so much I will teach you, and you will be so happy I did once I am finished.”

Karon wanted to reply, spit in her face and roar in denial – but all he could do was grunt in impotent rage.

“Oh and I must not forget your little spirit, the pet will be very important later,” Dolor exclaimed and danced over to Promise and picked the spear up.

Karon didn't know what to say, what to feel or think. He could do nothing but watch, and he was tired of watching, as he knew it would only get worse. He listened as Dolor's footsteps faded as she went to get Promise, then returned as she sat down next to him and whispered sweetly, “Poor, poor trickster. Bad Timor has poisoned you, I see… I taught him that, did he mention that? Well, we can't have you dying, so I will just have to fix that.”

Whatever pain the poison had put Karon through was nothing compared to the sensation that struck him at Dolor's touch. Everything inside him burned with an acid fire, and he could feel how the poison was drawn out, bleeding out from the pores on his skin. It was beyond anything he could have imagined, and before long his mind had fled into unconsciousness.

                         *************************************************

The room was mostly dark, and Karon hung suspended from the ceiling with his hands bound in silk rope. His feet were a few inches above the floor, and two lamps shone with a muted golden light on opposite walls to his left and right, giving him an excruciatingly vivid look at the great variety of tools lined up on the tables around him.

He had woken up like that, and enough time had passed by that the immediate shock had managed to wear off, and Karon was now waiting for something, anything to happen, as long as it didn't involve more waiting.

Eventually, after Karon had started trying to imagine how the tools in sight were supposed to be used, he could hear the sound of a door creaking open at the back of the room, and light footsteps followed as Dolor came to stand before him.

She raised a hand and drew it gently across Karon's chest, feeling the fabric of his robe underneath her fingertips.

“You hate me now, and you will hate me more than you ever have hated anything soon. But it will pass, and I will teach you things about yourself. I will make you feel and think in ways you couldn't imagine before me, and in the end, you will not hate me, you will love me,” she whispered softly, and raised her hands to her head, and undid the clasp of her black mask.

It came off to reveal a human female, her skin pale ashen gray and her lips cracked and colorless. Her hair shone in silver and gray, but despite the signs of age her skin looked smooth as marble and a look of youth stood in contrast to her colors, and when she looked at him some small rebellious part of Karon's mind admitted she was beautiful.

But the only real part of her face Karon was paying any attention to were her eyes, her orange eyes. But not the liquid amber that Karon's own were, but a burning angry fire, with lines of red running across the iris.

She smiled at him, her face twisting into the perfect image of corrupted innocence and beauty,  and whispered sweetly. “Now, try not to scream too much, it will make it hard for you to hear when I speak.”

“Don't you dare fucking scream! Don't you dare.”

“I won't scream, I won't even whimper. I will stare at this bitch in silence and she'll know she can't break me.”

“I won't scream.”

“Don't scream...”

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